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My goal is to be smart enough to know how much I don't know. I don't think I'll ever achieve that.

I'll take being decent over being smart any day. For all the smart people we have in government and industry, look at where we are as a society and what we have done to each other and the environment. Being decent is rare.

I mean, look at that lovely woman you snagged. And you never forgot how lucky you are. Smart.

One of the best things I learned as an adult is that there are so many different ways of being smart. I’m good at taking tests, and lucky me, that skill got rewarded plenty in school. But! Some other people can lead. Some can read other people well. Some can visualize solutions. Etc etc

I had to take the wunderlich as part of a job interview once. Did pretty well (struggled more with time than the questions, in part due to going in cold and not expecting it), but i did pretty well on the IQ test in grade school too.

"However smart I am, it's smart enough for my purposes." I'm saving that line.

I don't need to see the score, but the card sorting test they did when I was 19 was incredibly fun and I would like to do that again.

I scored over 9000!

just to avoid getting blindsided about something u dont know youre not good at

Smarts are one half of a minimum to entry (other being common sense). Once you clear pretty smart outside of very specific fields incremental smarts has limited returns. Once you clear the minimum it’s much more about work ethic and not being an asshole (and luck, always luck)

I've done a few for various reasons (job applications, mental health evals ect) and what mostly struck me is that they are often pretty much focused on pattern recognition and extrapolation I mean, its a trick i know well, but it seems too narrow to place a lot of value in

Can relate. These days I'm more limited by how much mental stamina I have with which to apply intelligence, not so much intelligence. Thus I would be better served using my limited reserves to get shit done, not taking IQ tests.

Choosing not to take an intelligence test should be an indicator of intelligence.

I always say I smart enough to create problems for myself that I can not solve :D

indeed, even if they werent bunkum I dont need to quantify how smart I am

Being smart is like being a leader. If you have to tell people either, you're probably not actually. My response to "do you think you're smart?" (or the much more dangerous "do you think you're smarter than me?") is pretty much always "I try to be as smart as I can be in every situation".

my brain is a harbor freight tool

Exactly. This ^ Got nothing to prove. Besides consciousness is just something we *borrow* from the ether. It's what you do with it that matters.

I feel like too many people treat it as a rank or a hierarchy or a sport and my response is usually:

50% of people are smarter than average. 50% are dumber than average. They're often the same people.

Yep. Most smart people realize at some point that being the smartest person in the room is like being the tallest person in the grocery store. You're still there to do your own shopping, and occasionally, to help people around you take things off the top shelves, and not make a big deal out of it.

Knowing that intelligence is just a measure of one specific type of aptitude, not tied to character or morals, is something that many people would do well to learn. Some of the most compassionate and helpful people I know are not very smart, and that’s perfectly okay.

The worst thing about being the smart kid in elementary and high school was showing up at college not knowing how to learn something that was not immediately intuitive for me. I hit the wall at differential equations.

And realising being smart isn't just what you know but how you interpret and apply what you know, including appreciating what you don't.

Yeah, ignorance is far more common than stupidity.

To me being smart is kind of like being physically attractive. Lots of people are, it takes some work sometimes, and doesn’t tell you much else about that person.

Enhh more would be good

I was a very smart kid, and my parents were SO proud and SO convinced of my specialness, and they made sure I knew just how special I was before they sent me off to school to have my illusions shattered.

If one is in the top 1% for smarts that just means there's tens of millions of people smarter than you instead of hundreds of millions.

It also helps to realize that even if one is reasonably smart, there are even smarter people who, given a chance, can and will demonstrate that there is a lot we don't know.

I’m trying to raise my kids to know that from the start. Us GenX kids who were told we were special because we were smart (as opposed to because everyone is special) really kind of had the worst of our ego fed by that.

Smart...maybe...pretty...hmmmm?

The smartest people are the ones who know that there are others who are much smarter than them.

and in many different ways

'mostly got bs at gcse cos i didn't revise.' 'whut. So, 8 bs?' 'no, 7 bs. 2as, 3cs.' 'that's 12 subjects. The fuck?' Cue me finding out most people only do 8.

Being in rooms where you’re the smartest person (a situation I’m rarely/never in) doesn’t do much to create opportunities to learn anything or grow in any way.

And the only way to include enough knowledge for almost any meeting topic. No matter how many fields you’re trained or experienced in…

My dad was a research chemist. The culture where he worked said the only people who used their "Dr" title were actual medical doctors and newly minted PhDs who could get away with that for a few months (or when dealing with bureaucrats, of course.) After that they were just "Bob".

If I'm ever the smartest person in the room about one thing, I can 100% guarantee you someone else in that room is smarter than me in some other field, no matter whom I'm with. Intelligence is always conditional. Which, incidentally, is one of the many reasons the calipers brigade are full of shit.

But I thought IQ was the best way to measure a human's worth? Second only to how wealthy they are?

I certainly know you are creative.

Why do people even think that they are the same level of smart all of the time? I’m certainly not.

And some of the nicest people that I have met were not "very smart" in the conventional sense".

I'll add that being told you're smart at the wrong stage can encourage a laziness that completely undermines being smart. Those who apply themselves will get further.

And also - there's different types of smart! Emotional Intelligence is extremely undervalued in our society, but it's absolutely *crucial!* I was a smart kid growing up, but until my 30's I was pretty emotionally dumb

Tend to think of myself as pretty clever (I’ve taught physics) and then I met and chatted with @doctorow.pluralistic.net and was taken slightly aback at how much he is one clever cat. Similarly, meeting @scalzi.com in person, one is immediately aware of his sharp wit and keen sense of humor.

I think of being smart as akin to a parlor trick, occasionally impressive, sometimes useful, but overall not the most important thing in life

something i think about often is how many smart and talented people are unable to manifest those things because of the ways our society is structured never gave them a chance. i always felt kinda smart but i'm still figuring out how to manifest it, myself. learning never ends

When you look around you, consider this: the technology of this world was created by geniuses, but the maintenance and running of this world is mostly by people with an IQ of 100. An IQ of 100 is pretty awesome.